Our loveable spiky-haired loon

Just as childhood gang-leader and general tearaway, Wullie commanded the friendship - though rarely the respect - of best pals Fat Boab, Soapy Souter and Wee Eck, so the comic-book character first conceived almost 70 years ago has a special place in the heart of Scots.

And as every edition of the long-awaited annual Christmas album reminded us, working-class Wullie was "Oor Wullie, Your Wullie, Abody's Wullie".

With most other expensive presents discarded by Boxing Day, Wullie's annual cartoon compendium could be dipped into throughout the year, and handed down through generations.

The first Oor Wullie cartoon ran on 8 March 1936, in the newly launched "Fun Section" of another Scottish newspaper, the Sunday Post, at a time when comics were thought solely the preserve of children who had yet to tune in to the telly.

The brainchild of Robert Low, the paper's managing editor, Oor Wullie ran alongside a another new cartoon featuring a family with which it would become synonymous: The Broons, of No 10 Glebe Street, Glasgow.

Wullie, drawn in his famous black dungarees and hardy, or "muckle", boots by artist Dudley D Watkins, caught the imagination of young and old with his particular brand of mischief.

Showing ingenuity all too common to pre-adolescent Scots wandering the streets, Wullie would routinely antagonise his Ma and Pa, fight his bullying enemy, Basher McTurk, and evade his neighbourhood policeman, PC Murdoch, ever returning to sit on his trusty, rusty bucket. Occasionally, a member of the Broon clan would appear in the story.

Though the first cartoon shows a mischievous Wullie rerouting tram lines so a carriage crashes into a steamroller, the humour was usually a mix of subtle patter and belly-shuddering moments of situation comedy.

Wullie's comedic misadventures helped the newspaper to reach an astonishing 79 per cent of the adult population of Scotland by 1971, registering more than three million readers on Watkins' retirement that year.

Tom Morton, radio personality and the current Oor Wullie scriptwriter, explains: "It was a magical, alternative world, a weird parallel existence that anyone growing up on the west coast would have read." And the east coast and the north coast…

It was never entirely clear where Wullie lived. Many signs, such as the proximity to the Broons, pointed to Glasgow, though some say Wullie's tenement block was situated in a mixture of Clydeside closes and the loans of Dundee, the home of publishers DC Thomson. Since the 1990s, Wullie has officially lived in the fictional town of Auchenshoogle. Even the story lines are a funny blend of fact and fiction.

"I love the daft things, like about IKEA," Morton shares. "We did a Scottish thing called 'Aye-KEA', things like that."

Morton, who each week writes 17 frames of dialogue for Wullie, and eight for The Broons, says coming up with the 104 scripts a year is "the most difficult thing I've done in journalism".

Adapting Wullie to the modern world is hampered somewhat by health & safety issues, he adds. "We had an idea for him to go skateboarding across a main road, which today we can't do."

So no more steamrollers, then.

The current artist, Peter Davidson, who also draws The Broons, says Wullie is "a Scottish icon", adding: "He topped a poll recently, as the most popular Scot. Sean Connery, I believe, was third [William Wallace came second]. Maggie Broon was voted sexiest Scot.

"I try and keep the style of drawing as close to the original style of Dudley D Watkins, who was a genius, as everyone knows."

Davidson's interpretation of Watkins' original has captured new fans. As Wullie's 70th anniversary approaches in 2006, Morton reminds us that Wullie has been a favourite to children and adults alike.

"Wullie has to have an adult dimension too. In some ways he always was a wee man, and not a child."

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